King Arthur Flour sends out email blasts that highlight specials, new products, and recipes. Recently, one landed in my inbox with a recipe for Six Grain Bread, which captured my interest. Like many bakers, I have assorted seeds, grains, etc., stashed away to use in my baking. While I didn’t have their Harvest Grain blend on hand, I did have poppy seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and oat bran, all of which I used instead of the blend.

The result? A flavorful, easy to slice bread that made good sandwiches and even better toast. Master Chow, my Honorable Husband, asked me to put it on the repeat list. Even though the flavor was very good, next time I am going to retard rising by storing the dough in the refrigerator overnight to see how that changes the flavor profile. And be sure to check out Susan’s weekly YeastSpotting round up of breads baked all around the world.

1) Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl. Mix and knead by hand or stand mixer until the dough is smooth and supple, adding additional liquid or all-purpose flour as needed. I recommend that you leave the dough slightly sticky – as it rises, the stickiness will diminish and in the end you will have a moister and more tender loaf.

2) Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, cover, and let it rise for about 1 hour.

3) Turn the dough onto a lightly oiled work surface, and shape it into a 9″ log.

4) Place the loaf in a lightly greased 9″ x 5″ pan, cover the pan, and let the loaf rise about 40 to 60 minutes, or until it’s crowned about 1″ over the rim of the pan. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.

5) Bake the bread for 30 to 40 minutes, or until it’s golden brown and its internal temperature registers 190°F on an instant-read thermometer.

6) Remove the bread from the oven, remove it from the pan, and allow it to cool on a rack.

Yield: 1 loaf.

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Published in bread • • Comments Off on King Arthur Flour’s Six Grain Bread, or Bread with Whatever Grain You Have Laying Around

Julia who? Julia Child, of course! Happy 100th birthday! Julia changed cooking in America; some of my earliest cooking memories are of watching The French Chef on public television with my mom, who would be furiously scribbling notes.

As you can tell from my blog, I went missing about a year and a half ago. I was still cooking, but had started a demanding job that kept me traveling a lot – I think I got on a plane last year about 70 times. Something had to give, and since I wanted to spend as much time with my Honorable Husband and pups, that something was blogging.

How better to break a blogging hiatus than to bake bread with the Bread Baking Babes, and this month’s host, Susan, of Wild Yeast Blog? A group of bread baking aficionados, this month the Babes invited everyone to join them in a celebration of Julia’s life by baking her 20-page French bread recipe with them.

Of course, a lot of things went wrong:

my baking stone cracked in half

the battery died in my scale, so I could not weigh ingredients

it was extremely hot and humid, which required the addition of extra flour and really watching the rising times

my bread dough stuck to the floured surface, thereby causing me to break the surface tension when I removed it

I burned my arm in the oven

my boule partially fell off my baking sheet when I flipped it onto the baking sheet prior to getting it into the oven

I had my trusty team to help me: Gus, Sam (a new addition to the family – a sweet Cavalier rescue who we adopted last September), and Daisy:

The texture and flavor of this attempt was a lot better than my first one a few years ago, which leads me to an important point for all bread bakers, especially beginners: practice makes perfect. Don’t be afraid to try and fail; homemade bread usually tastes so much better than store bought that people will happily eat your disasters. If all else fails, turn them into bread crumbs. This loaf, however, will be eaten plain, and toasted with lots of butter. Yum. You can find Susan’s summary of Julia’s recipe below the jump, but I recommend that you get Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 2, to benefit from all of the detailed instructions. Be sure to check out Susan’s BBB roundup, and her weekly YeastSpotting post, as well.

Life the past few months has been a whirlwind of activity: visiting family and friends, life, and starting a new job. In fact, I travel about four days a week now! But I continue to cook and bake, I just haven’t had the time or the energy to tend to my humble blog. That, and the fact that I misplaced my camera (still to be found . . . maybe the suitcase I stored away ?) have slowed me down. So, today I present a roundup of some of the TWD treats I have baked,currently without pictures because they are on the memory card of my missing camera.

Betsy of A Cup of Sweetness chose Lemon Poppyseed Muffins on page 10. We are big muffin fans around here, and these were delicious even though I could not find my one pound bag of poppy seeds. Maybe they are with my camera?

A treat that I did not get to make but plan on tackling in the near future? Margo of Effort to Deliciousness choice of Fluff-Filled Chocolate Madeleines on pages 170-171.

Laurie of Slush and Julie of Someone’s In the Kitchen chose Midnight Crackles on page 74, and these were wonderful. The one change I made was to leave out the cinnamon and cloves, and add in about 1/2 teaspoon of instant espresso powder.

Another winner, Jill of Jill’s Blog chose Dorie’s incredible Cardamom Crumb Cake. This was fantastic, and will make repeat appearances in my kitchen.

The very odd Apple Coconut Family Cake, chosen by Amber of Cobbler du Monde, received mixed reviews. I switched out the apples and put in pineapple. I really disliked this cake, but everyone else liked it, including Master Chow who usually hates coconut.

Finally, the Peanuttiest Blondies from way back in early November, picked by Nicole of Bakeologie, also won rave reviews from everybody but me. Everybody liked these, but I didn’t, and I think it’s just because I like chocolate brownies, not chocolate wanna-be’s!

Be sure to go to the Tuesdays with Dorie blog to see what everyone else’s results were this week!

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I have been so busy, my life has been interfering with my cooking and baking, and that’s what life should be about, don’t you think? Ha!

At any rate, over the next couple weeks, I will be posting not only the weekly TWD dish, but others that I made but did not have time to post. So, today, in addition to a fantastic apple pie, I’m also posting the Double Apple Bundt Cake and coffee-less muffins.

First, this week’s All-American, All-Delicious Apple Pie on pages 300-302, chosen by Emily of Sandmuffin. Really, the only change I made was to eliminate the crumbs, and double the tapioca to four teaspoons, since I can’t stand a runny filling. This pie was outstanding, and both my honorable husband, Master Chow, and I thought the addition of the lemon zest is what made it so good. I’ve used lemon juice in the past, but from now on I will use the zest.

A couple weeks ago, TWD baker Lynne of Honey Muffin chose Double Apple Bundt Cake on pages 184 and 185. Another winner, and the flavor really mellowed overnight. I did not have apple butter, but I did have a jar of this pumpkin butter on hand and I needed to use it up. Absolutely delicious, and I also substituted dried cranberries for the raisins. Yum.

Finally, from back in September, I made the Coffee Break Muffins that Rhiani of Chocoholic Anonymous chose. Except that I eliminated the coffee because my husband hates coffee. So, I substituted 1/2 cup of orange juice and 1/2 cup of milk for the coffee, and added the zest of an orange and 1.5 cups of frozen cranberries. Voila! Orange cranberry muffins, that also go on the repeat list!

I have to thank Dorie and all the TWD bakers for their wonderful choices. It is so much fun to bake things that are so successful your family wants you to make them again!

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This week, Jasmine of Jasmine Cuisine selected Peanut Butter Crisscrosses on page 78 of Dorie’s book for Tuesdays with Dorie. Quick and easy to make, the cookies came out thick and crispy, and chock full of peanuts. I like my peanut butter cookies a bit more on the chewy side, but these were definitely a hit with the peanut lovers who tried them.

What’s been going on with me? Well, my neighbor accidentally cut my phone and internet line, and it took the phone company 18 days to repair it. The repair took about 30 minutes. I’ve been looking after my 80 year old auntie. Summer projects. Misplaced my camera and could not find it for about a week.

And, best of all, I was at King Arthur Flour for a week, taking an advanced bread baking class. I’ll be posting more about it, but you can read my two previous posts here and here.

As promised, here is another entry about my advanced baking class at King Arthur Flour. In keeping with my previous post about brioche, I thought I’d show you another item that we baked, something that is not common in this country: Brioche Feuilleté.

If you don’t eat butter, read no further. Brioche Feuilleté has a LOT of butter. Did I mention butter?

Speaking of butter, here is one of my favorite Saturday Night Live skits:

Actually, we made three mouthwatering breads with the brioche dough: brioche feuilleté, coffeecake, and bienenstich (bee sting). Today I’ll talk about brioche feuilleté, and save the other two for another day. Soon, I promise.

Brioche Feuilleté

Well, what can you say about taking brioche dough, which is loaded with butter, and laminating it (like puff pastry) with MORE butter? Yum. Pass it on down.

Chef Hamelman (his book is one of my favorites: Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes) first learned to make this at his first baking job about 34 years ago from a French baker. Basically, you roll out the brioche dough, and incorporate butter into it by folding, similar to the way you would make danish dough or puff pastry dough – that’s the “feuilleté” part. Here is the brioche dough before the lamination process, which I didn’t get pictures of because I was too busy:

In the photo above, we are cutting and weighing dough portions. Once that is done we divided our dough into three equal portions and rolled them out:

Brush the top edge of each strip THINLY with egg wash, and then pipe the filling in a thin strip near the bottom edge.

The filling was a mixture of ground hazelnuts, puff pastry crumbs (you can even use old bread crumbs), simple syrup, and egg whites. Roll each strip closed, pinching the bottom seam if you have to.

Keeping the seam side down, braid the three strips together and place in a standard loaf pan, brush with egg wash, and let rise until puffy. Then bake until it’s a rich, deep brown and the sides are firm. Baking temperature is about 350 F, but no higher than 375 F.

When the loaves were done, we brushed them with an apricot glaze, which I could have eaten straight out of the pot, and then Chef Hamelman drizzled a fondant glaze over the loaves.

This was so good, I was practically beside myself. The aroma was incredible. Buttery, fluffy brioche with little pockets of sweet nuts from the filling. Amazing. Its even good when it’s stale – just toast it. You can even top it with more butter, if you dare!

Sorry for the lousy photo above, but don’t let it stop you from making this delicious tart. I found this fabulous recipe over at Smitten Kitchen, and I’ve made it twice so far, to rave reviews. Even Master Chow, my honorable husband, fell in love with this, although he was skeptical that zucchini in a tart shell was much to rave about.

The last couple years have been exhausting in a number of ways, with lots of travel and caring for an ill family member. My husband recommended a vacation. For some reason, I just wasn’t interested. But I kept going back to the class offerings at KAF, and they REALLY interested me.

I met all sorts of wonderful people; some were in second or third careers, some were thinking of launching their own bakeries, and all of us were enthusiastic and eager to learn, and learn we did. Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be posting about all the wonderful breads and pastries that we made,but I’ll start with the brioche.

I’ve made a lot of brioche, but never Brioche à tête because I was intimidated by the shaping. Thanks to Chef Hamelman, I was able to produce a decent looking brioche, albeit a bit top heavy. I named her Dolly Parton. I’m not posting the recipe because we were baking in professional quantities, but any goodbrioche recipe will work for you.

Some tips:

weigh your ingredients, including the eggs (Dorie’s recipe in the link above doesn’t have weights, but it works)

develop the gluten in the dough until it “sheets” and you get a really good windowpane

keep the dough cold.

don’t drown the dough in flour when shaping, but keep your HANDS well floured the whole time so that you don’t rip the dough ball

when you are making a hole for the top knot, push all the way down to the bottom of the pan and make sure that the circle of dough surrounding the hole is of even diameter all the way around so that the brioche rises and bakes evenly

with dry, floured hands, really push that top knot into the hole, pushing until you feel the bottom of the pan

with a pair of scissors, make about five slashes evenly around the periphery of the brioche, right next to the edge of the pan, before the final proof.

the brioche in the picture above is NOT burned – that is the color you should get if you are using 100% butter. Dark is good.

this is important: to test to make sure your brioche is done, remove it from the pan and feel the sides of the loaf. Are they soft and giving, even if they look brown? If yes, the bread is NOT finished baking. Return it to the pan and the oven and check again in a few minutes. Why? If the sides are not baked firmly, the gluten structure will collapse and you will get an “hourglass” effect instead of the structured sides you are looking for.

Stay tuned for more posts on what I learned. I came home with over 100 pounds of flour, so I anticipate that my bread baking obsession will be well nurtured for the foreseeable future. And be sure to check out Susan’s weekly roundup called Yeastspotting!

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